War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism

by R. Craig Nation

The First World War represented a tragic crossroads for the international Left. The pressing decision of the hour—whether to collaborate with or to resist imperialist war—was answered overwhelmingly with the former choice by almost every major party of the Second International. Here is the story of those who chose the second road; a road that, the author argues, renewed socialism after the cataclysm of war. R. Craig Nation has been a professor of strategy and director of Eurasian studies at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, since 1996. He is a specialist in war and peace studies.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Lenin, World War I, War

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 1989

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful overview of the socialist anti-war opposition against WW1. The Zimmerwald conference represented the beginning of an organised opposition to the pro-war mainstream social democratic parties. The moderate wing of the movement called for the convocation of an international peace conference, rendering the working class effectively a pressure group on their imperialist states. The Left rightly argued that this was utopian - the war itself was a culmination of rising inter-imperialist tensions between the world powers, rooted in the capitalist mode of production. The war could not be ended by appealing to Europe’s rulers, who had every interest to pursue victory to its bloodiest, most barbarous ends. What was needed, the Left argued, was the direct intervention of the working class through mass struggle, towards the final end of the seizure of power. Organisation was essential to cohere and facilitate this.

Zimmerwald shows the importance of planting a politically principled flag, even if that puts you in a vast minority. It laid the foundations for a genuinely socialist, anti-war opposition throughout Europe.

[Martin Empson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this book deals with the machinations of a tiny number of socialists during World War One. The anti-war socialists who gathered in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald on September 5th 1915 represented few others. Many years afterwards in his autobiography Leon Trotsky joked that "half a century after the formation of the First International it was still possible to fit all the internationalists in Europe into four coaches."

Before the outbreak of World War One, the international socialist movement, united in the Second International, had promised strikes, mass opposition and rebellion against the war. Instead they almost completely capitulated and supported their nation states. Overnight, the Second International turned into a toothless beast. Most of its constituent groups supported their own ruling class' role in the slaughter of the trenches. Those individual members who didn't were in no way united in how their opposition to the conflict should manifest itself. There were those that supported a defensive war, those who wanted to issue the simple demand for "peace" and those, like Lenin, who argued that the war needed to be turned into "a civil war" that could overthrow capitalism.

Nation's book is tremendously important, because he shows how Lenin's political clarity and firmness of action was able to create a very small, but important, Zimmerwald Left. Lenin hoped that this would become the basis for a new, revolutionary, Third International.

Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...